


Akashit Happens

by viascos



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Drunken idiots, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 08:14:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viascos/pseuds/viascos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Akashi Seijuurou is a lightweight in every sense of the term.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Akashit Happens

“Wait, where’s Akashicchi?”

Murasakibara lowers his head and glances away from the pinprick of a star he’s been staring at for the past ten minutes. Kise is looking back over the shoulder that isn’t bearing half of Aomine’s weight. They’re leading the pack a few paces ahead and when they stop, Aomine slips to his knees and flops into an undignified heap. He’s still sopping wet and missing a shoe from his encounter with the park fountain. A puddle seeps out on the surrounding sidewalk. Midorima cuts off mid-sentence, something about someone who just “started singing at the top of his lungs and I didn’t know what to do so I froze up and it was literally the most embarrassing moment of my life…” Kagami reaches over to clap a reassuring hand on his shoulder and says,

“I sincerely doubt that.”

Murasakibara frowns. Akashi had been stumbling along contentedly right behind him. He turns in a circle to make a quick visual sweep of the area, which proves to be a terrible idea and he almost joins Aomine on the concrete.

“Watch it, we don’t need a scale ten earthquake,” Kagami snaps, and then dissolves into heaving giggles at his own joke. He sways dangerously and nearly knocks over Kuroko, who seems to be peacefully asleep on his feet.

“Thi’ one’s already pre’y bad,” Aomine slurs in agreement, his cheek pressed against the perfectly solid and stagnant ground. One hand shoots out to grab the nearest ankle. “How’re you withstanding these tremors?” He sounds legitimately impressed.

Midorima kicks his hand off and huffs in annoyance, but the following and poorly disguised hiccup ruins the effect. “How are you even saying words with more than one syllable?” Somewhere along the way he swapped his glasses out for a pair of sunglasses but Murasakibara can’t remember the exchange. Or where the glasses went for that matter. Better to not bring it up then. The shades keep slipping further down Mido-chin’s nose and it doesn’t seem like he’s noticing.

His mind is wandering and it takes Murasakibara a second to remember what he was looking for. Then a reddish streak blows past him.

“Hey!” Kise shouts and Aomine lifts his head up to let out a throaty whoop. Akashi loops around in a broad arc and doubles back, eyes bright and wide enough to pop out of his head.

“Tetsuya,” he heaves breathlessly. Kuroko yawns. “There’s been a new development to your power and what I’ve just discovered may change everything. Come closer, we can’t risk this information falling into the wrong hands.” Kuroko looks blearily taken aback and Kagami nudges him, interested enough for the both of them.

“What is it, Akashi-kun?” Akashi leans forward, burps wetly and blows it into Kuroko’s face. Spins on his heel. Jogs away.

Kagami’s jaw drops.

Midorima blinks.

Kise waves a hand in front of his face.

Kuroko yawns again.

Aomine rolls over and nudges Murasakibara’s heel with his foot.

“All yours, big guy.”

*

“Aka-chin, please don’t run,” Murasakibara pleads. It’s really more like prolonged stumbling. The others cheer and holler obnoxiously a ways back. The neighborhood is otherwise very quiet, and Murasakibara doesn’t need a stupid Oha Asa fortune to tell him the cops are going to get a call, which means even more running in the near future. A good fifteen feet of sidewalk stretches between them and Akashi is darting around, zigzagging like one’s meant to do when being pursued by a large animal. Murasakibara has never seen anything less graceful in his life, but if anything Akashi hasn’t lost his speed and he can feel himself breaking a sweat. It’s not helping that everything looks like it’s under water. With a war cry, Akashi bounds up to the intersection at the end of the road, screeching to a halt in front of the stop sign. A second later Murasakibara catches up and hears him snarl,

“H’ dare you give me orders.”

His face is flushed bright red and he’s swaying from side to side. He jabs his hand out and smacks the pole and the sign doesn’t budge so he hits it again. And again. Murasakibara hunches over to catch his breath, hands on his knees. There’s no reasoning with Akashi in his current state.

“It…uh…it didn’t mean to offend you.” He grabs at Akashi’s shoulder and Akashi dances away, tripping over the curb.

“Don’ try to defend his actions, Atsushi, I'm abso-fucking-lute.”

“You’re abso-fucking-cute!” Kise. Murasakibara swears under his breath, vowing to never again let Akashi Seijuurou near a drop of sake for the rest of his life.

“I’m not … Aka–!”

He’s already halfway across the street.

He scurries out of sight behind a parked car and Murasakibara breaks into a sprint, barreling across the intersection. At two in the morning the roads are fortunately empty and Akashi isn’t a red smear on the blacktop.

He rounds the corner of the block. A high fence wraps around the nearest property and Akashi is trying to scale it and failing miserably. He jumps for the top rung and misses, landing in a rumpled heap on the grass. Dazed, he rolls over and stares up at the sky.

“Will I ever dunk, Atsushi?”

Murasakibara almost laughs out loud and leaning over, grabs the front of Akashi’s sweatshirt. He heaves him up over his shoulder and Akashi makes a sound of protest that sounds a bit like a startled goat.

“Let’s go, your highness.”

*

When they get back, Aomine’s phone is buzzing in his pocket and in a brief moment of lucidity he pulls it out and it promptly slips from his fingers. With a yell he kicks his foot out to keep it from smashing into pieces against the cement and it flies into the grass. Kise watches cautiously while he staggers over to retrieve it, ready to swoop in if need be.

“Put me down,” Akashi orders for the third time, his heart not really in it anymore.

“I dunno, the damsel-in-distress is kinda a good look for you.”

This time it takes every ounce of strength Murisakibara can muster to restrain the flailing limbs and once again Kagami is laughing at what he thinks is clever commentary.

“Kaga-chin, plea—“

“Say that to my face, Taiga.”

“Thought you weren’t about that, Baka-chin.”

“I’d stop if I were you, Kagami-kun.”

Phone in hand, Aomine reappears beside Kise, who is shaking with silent laughter. For a minute, he watches the vertical wrestling match occurring with glazed eyes and without comment before addressing the whole group.

“Imayoshi says he ditched the Touou party ‘cause there’s another one up at Ki…k—“ He squints at the screen again for a second, gives up. “…Wanna go?”

“He ditched his own party?”  


Kagami glances at the text over Aomine’s shoulder and arches an eyebrow.

“Do you have a death wish?” Aomine contemplates this for a moment.

“The only one who can ki—“

“No.” Kagami and Kuroko intone in unison.

Murasakibara nods in agreement, both his arms wrapping around Akashi’s legs to contain the kicking, slower now.

“Aka-chin is going home,” He declares loudly. “I don’t care what the rest of you do.”

It’s as good a parting statement as any; he decides and turns, which allows Akashi to punch Kagami weakly in the head on the rotation. Kagami takes a swing in return that he dodges, of course. Murasakibara speeds up anyway to stop the second wind of bickering before it starts.

“So, what are we doing,” he hears Midorima ask. Before they round the corner and slip out of sight, Murasakibara glances back to see Aomine hold his lit up phone out expectantly, only to receive a myriad of headshakes. Where they do end up, he’ll probably never know.

*

Afterwards, Akashi quiets down considerably. He’s still hanging against Murasakibara’s back, intently watching his heels kick up gravel. His face is out of sight so it’s impossible to guess what’s going through his head, but knowing him, his mind is racing despite how completely smashed he is. He laughs, out of the blue. It’s raspy, like there’s a bitter taste in his mouth.

“120 to 100,” he states bluntly.

“Huh…oh.” It takes him a second, but Murasakibara remembers. The score. The game that knocked Akashi’s world off balance.

“Rakuzan is tarnished.” As is the Akashi name. He doesn’t say it, but Murasakibara can tell it’s what he’s thinking in whatever drunken haze he’s slipped into now. It’s been a rollercoaster of a night. The words aren’t resentful, just resigned. Murasakibara knows he doesn’t hold it against Kagami and his team, he holds it against himself, but he can’t help but wonder if the words are Akashi’s own or words he has been told.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Murasakibara asks, playing dumb for lack of a better response. Akashi launches into a faltering recitation of the mantras they have all heard hundreds of times before, tapping them out with his index finger against Murasakibara’s back. There’s something different about his voice, something cynical. Or maybe it’s the slurring and nothing more.

“Winning is everything…Failure is unacceptable…”

Akashi never talked about what happened after the Winter Cup final and Murasakibara never asked. It is not his place to ask. All he knows is what he’s heard through the grapevine: that Akashi disappeared for a few days and when he showed up again, at the park court the weekend following the tournament, he was with Kuroko’s team. No one knew what to make of it so they shrugged it off and moved on. Seirin had earned Akashi’s respect and as surprising as it was, it made sense.

“I should have foreseen it,” He pauses because the word is unfamiliar in his mouth. “…defeat.” He sounds tired. Murasakibara wonders how many times a day he replays the final seconds of the game in his head, searching desperately for the moment it all went wrong.

“Yeah, well, I hear that’s going around,” Murasakibara says wryly, but gives Akashi’s ankle an awkward squeeze of … comfort? No, solidarity, he decides. But Akashi Seijuurou does not admit his shortcomings, because he sincerely believes he has none. An argument can be made for his stature, but not if you know what’s good for you. That’s the Aka-chin he knows, the one he’s known since their first year of middle school. The person dangling off his shoulder is someone else entirely. Someone new … or someone old. Someone vaguely familiar.

He shakes the thought away because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that it makes him feel like a weight is lifting off. It doesn’t matter because he doesn’t give two shits about basketball. He plays because he can win and nothing more. Right? The more he thinks about it the more it starts to sound like trying to convince himself, so he pushes it to the back of his mind and focuses on the grumbling of his stomach instead. He hasn’t eaten in two hours.

In the meantime, Akashi has fallen silent and started banging his chin against Murasakibara’s shoulder blade. He groans and without warning shifts precariously into a sitting position by swinging his leg over Murasakibara’s head and flops against his hair.

“Puke on my head and I’ll crush even you, Aka-chin.”

Akashi is quiet for a moment longer, probably gauging whether vomiting is in his future or not. Then he mumbles “Duly noted,” and falls asleep.

*

When Murasakibara reaches the crest of the hill connecting to the gated front drive of the Akashi mansion, he reaches up and gently flicks his lightly snoring passenger in the forehead. Nothing. He sighs and strides up to the gate to peer through the bars.

Mansion is a strong word. The house is elaborate and modern and very clearly high class but smaller than one would expect. What it lacks in size, it makes up for in imposing presence. Just like a certain someone. Dimensions aside, and as beautiful as it is, there’s something about it that seems uninviting, cold. Murasakibara has only ever seen the outside, but he doesn’t think that the interior would be much different.

He bounces a little, jostling Akashi until he lifts his head up with a low whine. Then he gasps and both his arms clasp around Murasakibara’s head in a death grip, startled at waking up seven feet in the air, and Murasakibara gets a mouthful of pale forearm.

“Where the hell…”

“Mmfph –“

Akashi lets go and slumps down again with a yawn.

“Sorry. Just let me sleep, Atsushi.”

He flicks him again and Akashi slaps pitifully at his hand.

“Aka-chin has to let us in.” He gestures toward the keypad on the gate and crouches down so Akashi can reach the buttons. He makes an exaggerated groan and complies, punching the code in with his middle finger.

Murasakibara knows the route around the tree-lined yard well; it’s the one they have to take every time their nightly escapades get too late, too intoxicated. Akashi doesn’t do it much, for reasons already well demonstrated, but Murasakibara also knows there is someone in the pretty house whose wrath is best avoided.

There’s a ledge underneath Akashi’s second floor bedroom window that Murasakibara can hoist himself up on. He has muscle memory of the climb by now. The tricky part is that Akashi has to stand up on his shoulders to reach the windowsill, which he does, miraculously steady. The window was left unlocked and he shoves his fingertips under the seam, shoving it upward with a bang. They both freeze and listen for footsteps or a voice and let out a breath in unison when they hear neither.

Murasakibara boosts him up by the ankles and Akashi slides through the opening. He lands on the carpet with a dull thud. There’s a pause and two smaller bumps of sneakers hitting the floor before Murasakibara hears the bed creak.

“Aka-chin.” He hisses.

Silence for a moment then Akashi’s head pops out the window.

“What.”

“Goodnight.”

Akashi stares down at him with an unfathomable expression. His arm dangles out the window and Murasakibara can see the skin on his knuckles is grazed open from the sign encounter. He leans out further and pats the top of Murasakibara’s head once, his fingers barely making contact.

“Goodnight.” He ducks inside and Murasakibara may or may not imagine the quiet words that drift out after.

“Thank you.”


End file.
